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This article explores the concept of ‘regulatory convergence’ in the context of the evolving literature on legal convergence and divergence. Such a concept has emerged as an overarching horizontal discipline in the latest generation of preferential trade agreements and aims to reduce unnecessary regulatory incompatibilities between countries in order to facilitate cross-border trade and investment.

Differing approaches to regulatory convergence found in recently concluded PTAs, or are currently under negotiation, are examined, with a special focus on the ‘regulatory cooperation’ approach embedded in CETA, the path of ‘regulatory improvement’ taken by members of the Pacific Alliance, and the ‘regulatory coherence’ track included in the TPP. We also refer to the TTIP negotiations conducted between the EU and the US.

The article offers a broad understanding of the different ways in which regulatory convergence is implemented across PTAs, and the legal complexities resulting from the ambiguity of the concept. It further describes the scope and effects of the different mechanisms used to achieve regulatory convergence, on both substantive and procedural matters.

The negotiation of a patchy but burgeoning network of international investment agreements and the increasing use to which they are put is generating a growing body of jurisprudence which, while still evolving, requires closer analytical scrutiny. Drawing on many of the most distinguished voices in investment law and policy, and offering novel, multidisciplinary perspectives on the rapidly evolving landscape shaping international investment activity and treaty-making, this book explores the most important economic, legal and policy challenges in contemporary international investment law and policy. It also examines the systemic implications flowing from frenetic recent judicial activism in investment matters and advances several innovative propositions for how best to promote greater overall coherence in rule-design, treaty use and policy making and thus offer a better balance between the rights and obligations of international investors and host states.

∙ Trade in services ranks among the most intractable subject matters in modern trade diplomacy. Confronted with such complexity, diversity, learning by doing and fragmentation are key characteristics of the evolving regimes governing services trade.

∙ Fragmentation may represent a source of policy and innovation able to inform and shape future directions in multilateral rule-making. It can also offer alternative theatres of collective action able to yield superior outcomes or more politically palatable bargains than those on offer at the World Trade Organization (WTO) or under preferential trade agreements (PTAs).

∙ The adoption of a necessity test applicable across services sectors and enhanced transparency disciplines would improve the quality of services trade regulation. The absence of a necessity test can devalue regulatory disciplines on domestic regulation.

∙ The immigration law caveat of the GATS Annex on the Temporary Movement of Natural Persons and flexibilities within the structure for scheduling GATS commitments exacerbate the divide between a global labour migration regime favouring high-skilled workers and bilateral, non-trade migration agreements regulating the flows of low-skilled and potentially irregular migrants. This schism prevents progress towards a coherent global governance of migration.

∙ The interpretation of the ‘likeness’ concept in the GATS rules on non-discrimination requires an assessment of the competitive relationship between suppliers and services in the marketplace. As trade in services may involve the movement of suppliers and services, consideration must be given to both service-related and supplier-related factors in order to reach an overall conclusion on the competitive relationship between the types of service transactions under scrutiny. […]